


Or Nettle

by ourladyofmanycats



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Angst, But not sexual, F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Fitzcentric, Fluff and Angst, Gardening, In Bed, Mild Spoilers, Not Beta Read, One Shot, SHIELD Academy, Short & Sweet, Sleepy Cuddles, for your feels, just a little something cute, season 5, since AOS is killing me, sorry - Freeform, the lighthouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 16:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourladyofmanycats/pseuds/ourladyofmanycats
Summary: Fitz and Simmons try to fall asleep, but instead lie in bed and spend their time thinking of the newest mess they've gotten into, what used to be, and what could have been instead of...you know...this whole thing.





	Or Nettle

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I've written something else Fitz-centric, which is funny because Jemma Simmons is my actual hero. If you like to torture yourself, I've got more works chilling out for you. *finger guns*

“Do you remember what it was like then?” She asks him. They lay in the dark on their backs, staring up at a ceiling that neither of them can see. Maybe, if there was lunar light creeping through the window, but there isn’t. It is pitch dark, and he cannot even see the outline of his hand over his face.

“When what was like?” He asks back. There are a considerable amount of ‘thens’.

“Before SHIELD,” she finishes, and he can hear her turn to face him in the volume of her voice. 

There was nothing before SHIELD, not that he can remember, except of course the smell of his mother’s smoky tea. He doesn’t answer, not because he wants to ignore her, but because he isn’t even sure what is real and what isn’t. Was it his father who gave him his first microscope? Fitz doesn’t know and he is sure that he will never remember.

“I sometimes don’t think I’ll ever get to go back to that.” Her words are heavier than they sound.

“Being sixteen?” He says, finally. 

“Being amazed by the science of everyday life.” Jemma laughs, a lighter sound than any other she makes. She doesn’t do it as much now as she used to.

He knows what she means, really. He can’t look at the stars without thinking of distant alien planets. He can’t look at the heavy black lead of a gun without thinking of life undone. Not that he desires it--that he can no longer escape it. What is theoretical can be applied, must be tested. Each time he remembers, he spirals. He opens his eyes in the dark and feels his heart crushed against his fragile moral character. I am this thing, he says clearly in his head.

“We were other people then.” He knows how sad he sounds, but when he thinks of their early days at the academy, all he can see is Jemma in her white blazer, Jemma with her hand raised in class three rows in front of him, Jemma with her gloves on digging through mud, and he tears up a little. This was what she was like before they had come here.

She curls up against him, and he tries desperately to hide a sniffle with a cough.

“I know you’re crying,” she says gently in the way she always does. “I can smell it.”

“You and your super-sniffer,” he tries. 

“I love you still.” 

He knows. He knows that she grows tougher with time and her skin rougher and, Christ, he just wishes that she hadn’t had to. Jemma baking Christmas cookies in the student lounge. There is something about that image that bleaches his eyeballs.

“Remember our first class together?” She asks, and noses her way against his ear. The smell of ginger.

“I do. Maths.” 

“You were the most excited person in the room--it was astonishing, really, to see someone who was as enthusiastic as me about being there. Of course everyone was excited to be there, but I think it was different for you.”

He fixes his eyes on the ceiling again, and somewhere in the lighthouse is the sound of thunderous laughter that could have belonged to any number of people, but they weren’t here in this room feeling the same things that he was. It was just sorrow for Jemma and for himself.

The goddess takes the slowest breath, probably sleepier than before. She always fell asleep faster when lying against him, she said.

“Do you remember the night that you fell asleep in the library?” He whispers, afraid of ruining. If she is sleeping, he prays that he isn’t rousing her.

“Which time?” She says and he can hear her smile.

So the images flash one by one until they create moving pictures. The phi phenomenon. “The time that you had splayed all of your notebooks across my backpack. Then, you promptly fell asleep, one drool-covered cheek slobbering all over--”

She laughs so hard she shakes the both of them.

“Couldn’t think of what to do, I barely knew you.”

“I can’t remember what you did to get me to move. What was it?” she whispers slowly as she moves back to baseline.

Fitz is startled by his own smile. “I don’t remember either. I was hoping you would.” 

“Let’s pretend that you bought me a big cup of coffee and shook me awake--something kind.”

“Kind?”

“Well, kind for you, grumpy man.” She concedes.

He waits. She’s right that he probably did something worse, but he knows that he didn’t love her then. Instead, she grew around him like morning glories gaining territory in a vegetable garden. It reminds him.

“We could have gone anywhere else, somewhere other than the bus in the beginning and been just as...instrumental.” He says. He knows he didn’t love her then, either, but the delicious thought tempts him into imagining. “Some little cottage in Perth and you could dig in the yard, planting flowers and herbs or baking bread or something just as simple as you know, practicing complex algorithms.”

“Me?” She laughs. “You can imagine me out there in the garden planting roses?”

“You can’t?”

Jemma stops, and her mouth twirks to the side. “Oh, not me, no, but you maybe. Just until you get too cut up on the thorns and come back inside cursing your arse off.”

“Right, then.”

“And I, of course, am forced to patch you up good and proper.”

“I get a beer after, right?”

“Or two, depending on how many thorns are left in you once I’ve finished,” she chimes.

“Jemma,” he says, “you could never leave a thorn in me.”


End file.
